I Love to Fail and You should too!

Please recognize and accept this fact, for it will have, great influence on your future achievements.

WE HAVE NEVER BEEN TAUGHT HOW TO FAIL.

Failure is universal, endemic, and part of the human experience. The fact is, we are all failures or will eventually become so.   It is implicit in striving for success.  Being fully human means stretching ourselves to find our broadest capabilities.

Failure is the most democratic of all clubs.  About the only thing its members have in common is their secrecy about belonging.

Failure, one of our most universal experiences, remains taboo.

Success is what books are written about. Failure is almost never discussed. Failure is a judgment about events. In truth, they’re all “events”, nothing more and nothing less. It becomes a failure if your or someone else viewing it decides it is a failure.  The distinction between your judgment of the events and the event themselves is on prime importance in giving you power to reinvent yourself after a defeat.

Failure is a shorthand term for events and sense of judgment you make about yourself.  Forms of failure are varied but all have one thing in common: they involve a sense of loss. The losses may be one of three kinds: (1) Self-Esteem, (2) Money, (3) Social Status.  If there is no perceived loss, then we do not experience the events as failure. 

There is a distinction between your judgment and the events themselves.

Understanding this distinction is prime importance in giving you back the power to reinvent yourself after a defeat.

Failure may also mean not living up to your expectations. The first kind of failure (events i.e. bankrupt, divorce, firing) is very visible.   The second kind, which can be more damaging to your regrowth, is often invisible.   This “hidden failure” involves an inner dialogue about your own deep self-disappointment, and though no one in the outside world may never know, to yourself you are a failure.

Unlike employed workers who lose their jobs, entrepreneurs suffer an additional insult: they think they did it to themselves.   Quickly going from entrepreneurs to in-the-manure.

We are all part of the rapidly changing economic picture.  Gone are the days of starting with one employer at age twenty and retiring at age sixty-five with a gold watch.  The reality of foreign competition, shifting market demand, mergers and acquisitions and rapidly changing technology has changed the security view of the corporate America.

Is there anyplace one can work that is risk free? The answer is clearly no.

The only security is the self-confidence of knowing we cope with insecurity.

We can’t isolate ourselves from the possibly of failure. What we must do is learn how to learn from it.

Americans are the most success-oriented people in the world. We receive our messages early.  Competition is serious and desirable.  From first grade on, we are exposed to an instrument so pervasive it becomes a metaphor for life: The TEST.

Your abilities were measured; your worth was quantified. Even though you may failed a test, you yourself were not the failure, that you had other strengths as well.  Not only is our worth measurable, it’s measurable in the eyes of others.  We learn that the judgment of ourselves lies outside of us. The business of America was to be in business.

The business of America was to be in business.

With the Puritans, the success/failure ethic was born.  America invented a new upper class with only one entry requirement: money.  America is the cruelest county in which to fail.  America is also the best place in the world to fail. This is the land where you can go from rags to riches to rags and still hope to go back to riches.  Few of us recognize the benefit of failure.  It is important to fail and important to give our children permission to fail.  Learning early in life, that you can survive defeat, makes you tougher and more resilient, for the rest of your life.

There is no accomplishment without risk.  Failure gives you options.  It is important to understand what failure is and what it isn’t.

Success and failure are not polar opposites they are part of a continuum.  Neither is likely to be permanent; the irony is we believe both we last forever.  It is the way you cope with failure that shapes you, not the failure itself.  In the end, real strength comes from knowing we can survive.  There are few things worse than feeling you have failed. Your mood swings wildly from hope to despair.  It is a time of great confusion.

Failure seems to trigger a series of stages that are distinct and predictable.   The stages are (1) Shock, (2) Fear, (3) Anger and Blame, (4) Shame, (5) Despair.

First stage – Shock – The first reaction to sudden loss is disbelief, shock, and numbness.  The mind denies what it cannot process. Reactions are often physical; at this stage you should do nothing. It is always a mistake to make any major decisions during this phase.  What you need most at this stage is a sympathetic listener, not someone who will offer advice. Whenever shock occurs, it is safer do absolutely nothing except wait and allows the pain to recede.

Second Stage – Fear – At first, fear may be quite specific and even appropriate, but they can escalate quickly to unmanageable proportions.  By taking fear out of the shadows, fear becomes more manageable. Fear can turn into panic – a sense of sudden, incapacitating alarm.

Third Stage – Anger and Blame - as long as it is a passing stage it’s healthy.  It is a sign you value yourself. Blame, although everybody engages in it, it is almost always inaccurate. Blame, in other words, will only be your first interpretation, and not a very accurate one at that.  Anger, revenge, and blame are temporary and highly useful emotions.  These feelings serve a definite function; they become a problem only if they persist.

Fourth Stage – Shame – Shame owes its existence to the authority we give other people to judge us. Judging our own behavior, we might feel ashamed- a personal regret in not living up to an ideal – not shame – disapproval in the eyes of others.  Your attitude will determine the way they see you.  If you act ashamed and defeated people will treat you accordingly.  Shame is an unproductive feeling, but one that can only exist if you grant others authority to judge you.  Remind yourself that you are in power here.

NO ONE CAN MAKE YOU FEEL A VICTIM BUT YOU YOURSELF

Fifth Stage – Despair – Despair occurs only when there is a massive ego loss with no subsequent ego gain, and no apparent way out “Depression occurs when we lose confidence in our own coping mechanisms.  We become depressed when we are bankrupt of self-esteem and self-confidence, when we no longer have sense of our own capacities to insure either our actual survival or the worthiness or value of the life which we can sustain. Psychiatrist Willard Gaylin.”

Most depression is self-limiting. Usually after a period of a few months at most, the depression will usually have run it course.  One of the best ways to hasten the end of this stage of despair is to give in to it and allow yourself to mourn.  The best way to overcome despair is to give up least temporarily the serious endeavor that has defeated you and to turn instead to an easier, more accomplishable, different activity.

The stages of failure are as predictable as the stages of a disease, and just as survivable. Everyone experiences them and although they are uncomfortable, they are not permanent.  What is important is to let them happen so that you can get done with them.

To fail achieving a particular objective or goal is not a determination of self – worth.  It is just measuring point of what other areas of self-development you may need to experience or skills you may need to obtain.

The irony of succeeding is that one must fail first, to some degree, to obtain success.

This is a valuable lesson of life to recognize and accept. Once you understand this realization, that succeeding is failing and failing leads to success, you are own your on way to some exciting and personally rewarding experiences.

This is one of business building articles by  Juniques Marketing.

 I Love to Fail and You should too!   Will help you succeed beyond your  wildest dreams.

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